Property deal with false ID card in Jubilee Hills is not criminal act, say police

Hyderabad: The city police have concluded that the case of knocking of a valuable property in Jubilee Hills by way of impersonating the plot owner and forging her identity allegedly by chairman of NTV Telugu news channel T Narendra Chowdary and others, is not a criminal act, but “civil in nature”.

Based on the recommendations of the assistant commissioner of police of Banjara Hills division, the Jubilee Hills inspector S Rajasekhar Reddy submitted a report to the additional chief metropolitan magistrate court, Secunderabad.

The ACP also suggested that the complainant in the case should seek relief from the Registrar of Cooperative Societies.

The report by the ACP, a copy of which is available with Deccan Chronicle, is self-explanatory –that the police have not made any effort to investigate the allegations of serious offences. These offences include impersonation and forgery of an identity proof -- that too a voter ID card issued by the Election Commission of India – by the accused.

Notably, the accused have been granted anticipatory bail by the Telangana High Court.

Instead, the inspector dwelled at length on his investigation into the backdrop of filing of the case, the bitter rivalry between Chowdary and the complainant in the recently held society elections, and the efforts of a few to encroach into the plot allotted to one Ch Sirisha and is lying vacant.

The report filed before the magistrate completely ignored the deposition made by the owner of a house in Jubilee Hills, the municipal number of which was mentioned in the voter ID card of Sirisha, to establish proof of residence.

According to complainant B Ravindranath, secretary of the Jubilee Hills cooperative housing society, the NTV chairman along with others conspired to sell the Rs.45 crore worth plot using illegal means. The plot was originally allotted in the name of Sirisha, who was later found to be settled in the US, married an American and became a citizen there.

However, during the thick of the pandemic, Chowdary and secretary Hanumantha Rao completed the allotment process and registered the plot to a person who claimed herself to be Sirisha.

The person, who allegedly impersonated Sirisha, within no time registered a gift deed in favour of one Srihari who, in turn, sold it to former AP Minister P Pulla Rao’s wife.

“The Jubilee Hills inspector referred to a high court order directing the society to register the plot in the name of Sirisha perhaps in support of his civil-in-nature claims. Other plots were indeed registered following the HC order. But this particular case pertains to the criminal procedure in which the plot was registered,” said Ravindranath, adding that he was filing a protest petition against the police report.